This blog was formerly about the quest of a John to find the 'voluntary prostitute' in the Netherlands. How does a client of prostitutes separate the forced from the voluntary ones? Is it possible? That turns out to be a very difficult question. My current believe is that prostitution can never be regulated and that it would be better if people don't visit prostitutes. I see prostitution as paid sexual harassment, and therefore a human rights violation.

He agreed that I would publish his comment. Okay, here is his message, and I have added my own comments in blue (actually cyan):

Hi Kris!

Normally I wouldn't write you, but in your last article, you were not only writing about prostitution, but more vastly about the ideology of classical liberalism (modern libertarianism) which I adhere to. So, I want to clarify some points on that. [... I removed some parts relating to his private life in this area of the text - Donkey/Kris2]

You are right that libertarians defend sex work, i.e. sexworker rights. You are also right that people have the right to not like their work. Though I'd recommend everyone not liking his work to quit it ASAP and choose another one. But in the most cases, you don't like or dislike your job, but you rather like some aspects of it and you dislike some others and you have to decide for yourself if the positive aspects outweigh the negative ones. In my eyes, no job is only positive or only negative. In my opinion, all unwanted sex is rape and/or sexual assault/harassment. People should be protected against that. When a person sees no other options to take care of himself/herself and/or his/her loved ones, than to sell sexual services, sexual acts he/she would absolutely refuse in better circumstances, then this person is the victim of rape and/or sexual assault/harassment. Period. I have made this very clear to myself, and I'm not going to rape and sexually harass another person again, ever in my life! I will not visit a prostitute ever again. Furthermore, you assume it is easy for a person to find a new job with equal or better payment. The point is that many prostitutes don't easily find other work with better payment.

"That’s how they defend sexual assault in the workplace."

-Libertarians don't defend sexual assault, they are for laws against sexual assault. In the workplace or otherwise. Applied to everyone, including sexworkers. In New Zealand, a sexworker filed a complaint about her boss and she's won her case before courts. Any sane libertarian will be happy about this. Yes, but this is a case in which she clearly didn't consent to being sexually assaulted. People can be consensually raped and sexually harassed. This happens when a person has very limited options. In the worldview of libertarians, all consent is acceptable by definition. Libertarians don't look at contexts and social rules. Libertarians would find it completely acceptable when I would approach a random woman on the street and politely ask her to give me a blowjob. In the worldview of libertarians she could always say no. No harm done. And I could visit a slum inhabited by very poor people and ask a man if I could beat him up when I pay him some money. He could decide to agree to my demands because he is out of food, and he desperately needs to feed his children. According to libertarians it is perfectly fine when I beat him up when he consents to be beaten up. In my opinion, he is still the victim of violence. This man could notice there is a market for men who want to beat people up and who want to pay money for it, and he could decide that he wants to make a living out of it. This man is still a victim of violence. Likewise, a prostitute is still the victim of rape, even when she consented to being raped.

"Libertarians place consent above human dignity."

-Human dignity means you are treated like you are a human being. A human being is above all an free, autonomous being and a moral agent and should be treated like one. I can't think of anything more indigneous than threating a human being like his agency or consent wouldn't matter. Yes, but this is exactly the point because libertarians place agency/consent above human dignity. If a person consents, whatever this person consents to is acceptable by definition, according to libertarians. According to libertarians the human dignity of a person is respected as long as this person consents to something.

"a dangerous workplace where this person is badly treated, deserves every abuse, according to libertarians"

-Bullshit. No one deserves abuse. Wherever he or she works. The worker has consented to work in X, not to abuse. Yes, but what if a person consents to abuse because he desperately needs money to feed his children?

"There are even libertarians who defend domestic violence as a legitimate lifestyle!"

-Surely not. I'd be very interested to be shown examples of such scum. Where did you meet such "libertarians" ?` In any case, any sane libertarian is for laws against domestic violence. I referred to Fleurtje van Schaik alias Zondares (at least, I strongly suspect she is Zondares).

"Libertarians believe people should have the right to make mistakes."

-Sure. I agree with that. Everyone makes mistakes in his life, that's just fucking human and you learn from it. So, in the libertarian worldview a person has the right to work in a dangerous brothel/factory, suffer all kinds of assaults, and he/she just made a mistake, and he/she has every right to make this mistake. It is victim blaming. Prostitutes are blamed for the rapes and sexual harassment they suffer. They have the right to make mistakes! At least, according to libertarians.

"Therefore, when a person is tricked into doing something"

-No, we are in favour of laws against fraud. No, according to libertarians people have the right to make mistakes, so a person has the right to be tricked into doing something. Above all, true libertarians want to abolish the state, no social security, no army, no police, no judicial system, no public utilities, no laws against fraud.

"Libertarians want to abolish social security and solidarity."

-Ok. Here, it becomes tricky for you. We don't want the state forcing people to pay for a state insurance or state retirement system. We want people to have the choice between different private insurances or pension systems. So, we are NOT against social security, but for the privatization/liberalization of social security. Because no size fits all. We need a choice of sizes.

As for solidarity, for libertarians, only voluntary solidarity is real solidarity.
So, we want people to help each other themselves, not having the state forcing them to help.
If A helps B voluntarily [removed some private parts here], that's rightly called "solidarity". But if the state takes my tax money and gives it to person X, this is not real solidarity, by no means of the word. Sorry, if that offends you as a socialdemocrat, but this is the libertarian view. But you claim, we are against all those things, just because we don't want the state to provide them. The state is Robin Hood! Steal from the rich, give to the poor. In real life, there are people who are disabled, too old to work, have no family and friends. Without state pensions and allowances for disabled people, there will be a big social class of extremely poor people. Some elderly people and disabled people would simply starve. But there is one positive thing for libertarians! There will be an ample supply of impoverished women who will willingly "consent" to just any sexual request, no matter how degrading.

"They also want to remove the age of consent, and all the laws protecting workers"

-I don't. I agree with age of consent-laws. But I am in favour of Romeo-and-Juliet-legislations to avoid that a let's say 19th year old boy is punished for having sex with a 17th year old girl. As for worker protection, I would analyze with rules make sense and which ones don't. This is not a matter of "all or nothing". It's a question of the given laws protect the worker's individual rights or not. Libertarians want to destroy the state. No police, no laws, no age of consent laws, no laws to protect workers, no laws to protect prostitutes. That's why you hear the term "rights, not rescue" from prostitution defenders all the time. They don't want to "rescue" people, i.e. they don't want public social security, no social safety net, no money for poor people, no money for unemployed people, no exit programs for prostitutes, and they want to give people the right to be tortured and raped!

"They also want to abolish the prohibition of child labour."

-Child labour is not completely forbidden, even in Europe (just think of the movie industry to give just one example.) Many families wouldn't survive without child labour, if one likes it or not. My idea would be, to regulate it, by imposing maximum hours of work and security regulations as enforcing education rights as well (at least X hours of school for child workers etc.) With the aim of getting rid of child labour with the time due to more welfare for the concerned families. This is not hypocrite, but just acknowledging facts. In the West, child labour didn't disappear because of laws either, but because the welfare made child labour not necessary anymore. Again, libertarians are against the state. No police, no laws, no laws against child labour. You are not a true libertarian. You are more like a small government conservative, or a minarchist.

"The pro-prostitution movement is a hate movement. They say that we should listen to the sex workers, but they themselves only listen to those sex workers who support their own callous libertarian views. Prostitutes who point out abuse by clients and pimps in the sex industry are vilified and slandered."

-Also wrong. I endorse those people filing complaints against their abusers (of course, this only functions in a system where sex work is fully decriminalized). And once they've done this, the courts judge their case. If they win the case, the abuser has to be harshly punished. As a client myself, I am absolutely against ANY form of abuse by clients. Of course, if those people argue for prohibition or abolition, I cannot endorse those views, even if I say, that they have the right to tell us their ideas. Yes, but you use consent to determine if a person is abused. People consent to undergoing very degrading acts out of pure desperation. By the way, I have seen on twitter how prostitution defenders attack prostitutes who revealed abuses within the sex industry. It is like the Japanese proverb: The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down. One prostitute didn't want to have anything to do with what she called the 'pro-prostitution movement', although she wasn't against prostitution herself. In the past she was forced into prostitution by a man. She was vilified in a very awful way by prostitution defenders on the internet. Prostitution defenders are very dogmatic. There is a general denial of any kind of abuse in the sex industry, except when government operatives are the perpetrators (like the police, the tax department, public servants). Within the pro-prostitution movement, forced prostitution is called an 'abolitionist myth'.

10 comments:

Im in a hurry so I havent finished ur post but, let me see if i have understand how u reason. If, under a payment, u force someone to do sth he/she will not allow to do freely, then is the same as if u were forcing him/her. Right?

OH MAN. HOW CLEAR IS THAT U HAVE NEVER, NEVER, NEVER WORKED IN UR WHOLE LIFE!

Normal people need to work to live. They (we) even need to work a lot of more to feed SOCIAL PARASITES like u. Its irritating for me not only that u have not to work to live, while being a person capable (at least to work in a no hardworking job, like an office) and u are still so prepotent u tell others how to live.

Life is hard and long like a good dick. I have to work very hard to earn money, my job (I'm salesman) is deemed as hard and undesireable for many persons. If I could, I will not work but ITS HOW REAL WORLD WORKS. There are productive people, like the prostites and me, and unproductive people like public employees and you that do nothing for the society.

You should be ashamed for living without give a shit to society. U are a robber. U are a pimp. And the worst is that u think that people would not be allow to work due ur moral prejudices. Wouw, u are made of the same material our politicians are.

I know that u dont speak spanish, but let me show some videos where the own prostitutes (first video is from Mexico, second from Argentina) criticize the "anti-traficking" politics of the government bcause they are just HARMING THEM.

I have also uploaded two videos into my youtube account that appeared on spanish TV about "Pimps". U can see they are normal people, well: inmigrants, porr people, that are seen by people like u as the shit of the society.

U are not better person than us, u are not good heated but an authoritarian that ignores reality and does nothing to know it better. And ur defense of the public sector is in ur own benefit, bcause if u see how other people works hard to feed lazy guys like u I think u'll not be proud to defend the government. What I see day after day is that gvt worsens life of the people day after day.

See, ur beloved public agents are the ones that use the force they have to extort and blackmail prostitutes. They would not need to work as many hours if they were not stolen. But people like u is not capable to live without harm others.

Cliente X, you use the argument that because there is abuse in work other than prostitution, we should accept the abuse of prostitution.

I stick to fact that using someone's poverty to gain sexual access to them, is rape. This fact is not undone by the fact that other workers are also abused, or that we basically all have to work to make a living. At least you can say that someone should clean houses or clean sick people, that we have some kind of duties that we should do. Prostitution is always unnecessary, it is mindless sadistic sexual entertainment, which serves not other purpose than to humiliate people.

No, and I cannot work. You name the example of working in an office as not being labour intensive. I can tell you, working in an office is very stressful and labour intensive. You sit behind computer all day, having to process data as fast as you can ('time is money'!). Although at this moment, I can work behind a computer for some hours in a row, I can't do it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week! My body simply can't cope with it. And my mind simply can't cope with the immense pressure. Above all, you have to work in teams in an office, and my social skills are not up to par.

I am useless in the labour market. No employer is waiting for me. I have RSI/CANS-type of psychical problems, I have severe mental problems, I have problems with social interactions, I can't handle high levels of stress, I have intestinal problems, I have problems picking up routines, I have problems processing information, I have difficulties with listening to persons, etc....

I can perform some small menial tasks, but it is not enough to survive in the harsh labour market in which the demands are incredibly high. But I blame this on the free market economy which pushes people to work as hard as they possibly can. Yes, that's also a human rights violation, but it can be solved by getting rid of the free market and switching to a more humane socialist system where people work together instead of competing with each other. In such a world working in a humiliating job like prostitution or porn is not necessary anymore.

In a libertarian society people like me, people with mental problems, elderly people, disabled people, must simply hope that their families and friends will take care of them. Otherwise they would simply die. But that's what some libertarians want in the first place! The survival of the fittest. It makes the population stronger as a whole when weaker people are culled.

And this is the same main ideology which supports prostitution. It is a callous ideology which supports the starvation of the weak. Libertarians don't care about human dignity at all, that's why they also have no problems supporting prostitution.

And, regarding the anti-trafficking police, I don't agree with these practices. Prostitutes should truly be helped. They should not be kicked out of the brothels without any compensation or help, and they shouldn't be extorted by corrupt police officers.

As libertarianism means anarchism to you, I suggest you see my answers as appropriate for classical liberalism.

"unwanted sex is rape/sexual assault/harassment."

If you mean "undesired" (desired=being horny) by "unwanted", this is a nonsense definition, sorry. A lot of sex, even inside marriage, is by your definition "rape", because women have sex for a whole bunch of reasons, lust/desire being only one of those. Another would be "making the husband happy", because of love and/or to get something in return.

You are talking "sexual morality". Morality is not something to enforce by the state, but should be left to the individual and society. Society has many unwritten "rules", "norms", more or less valid or invalid, but the task of laws is to protect individual rights like the right to sexual autonomy. Not more, not less. Having sex for other reasons than pleasure is part of this. You are free to find it immoraland stay away from this.

"When a person sees no other options to take care of himself/herself and/or his/her loved ones, than to sell sexual services, sexual acts he/she would absolutely refuse in better circumstances, then this person is the victim of rape and/or sexual assault/harassment."

Constructing an analogy to labour in general, many people are then victims of "forced labour", because many people would rather stay home if they were rich enough to take care of themselves without the labour. "Force" always means "forced by other people using coercion or violence" or "forced by social institutions". "Force by nature" makes no sense, because, except for some very rich people, everyone is "forced by nature" to work to make a living.

"Furthermore, you assume it is easy for a person to find a new job with equal or better payment. The point is that many prostitutes don't easily find other work with better payment."

Right. I heard once from an escort, she makes ten grands a month. Nearly no way to find another job to gain THAT MUCH. Those are salaries of CEO's. Of course, most escorts don't gain that much, but still more than let's say a cashier in the supermarket. Why force them to be cashier? And if we prohibit sex work, because it's bad, why not also forbiding being a cashier, which seems to be even worse according to the judgment of those sexworkers?

"In the worldview of libertarians, all consent is acceptable by definition. Libertarians don't look at contexts and social rules. Libertarians would find it completely acceptable when I would approach a random woman on the street and politely ask her to give me a blowjob. In the worldview of libertarians she could always say no. No harm done."

Consent ends where serious harm is inflicted. For example, you cannot consent to have your dick cut off by a cannibal(cf.case of Armin Meiwes). I met indeed some libertarians who defended Meiwes, but I consider those as being rather a "fringe group" inside the broader liberty movement. It's surely not a position I stand for.

Yes, context is very important ! Social rules, too. Your example is surely an example of bad behaviour, bad manners. Just like catcalling. I am against such behaviour. In some contexts, I'd even consider it sexual harassment.

"And I could visit a slum inhabited by very poor people and ask a man if I could beat him up when I pay him some money. He could decide to agree to my demands because he is out of food, and he desperately needs to feed his children."

From a moral perspective, I'd say it's absolutely wrong to beat up people (except in a BDSM context with a willing partner and according to SSC-rules or in a sport context like boxing). From a legal perspective, I'd say it should be forbidden to inflict real harm. If someone wants to fight, he should go to a fighting club and participate at competitions with at least a minimum(!) of rules trying to protect the safety of the fighters.

"No, according to libertarians people have the right to make mistakes, so a person has the right to be tricked into doing something."

Those two things are NOT equivalent. If I a trick you into something, it's fraud. It is and should stay forbidden by the state. Only by being honest to you, I can assure you make a real decision not impaired by my lies. But you can still make a mistake in your decision. That's up to you. But if I sell you, let's say a car, saying to you, it is in a good state, and later you discover, the car has a lot of unmentioned flaws, that is FRAUD. Of course, in many cases it's difficult to prove like many other crimes.

"In real life, there are people who are disabled, too old to work, have no family and friends. Without state pensions and allowances for disabled people, there will be a big social class of extremely poor people. Some elderly people and disabled people would simply starve."

You have a negative view of mankind. You think, without state coercion, not much people would want to help the disadvantaged. I disagree. Human beings are by their very nature very social beings. We just have to look at how much money is donated to various NGO's. Anyway, I'd have no problem with a social state just helping the poor and/or disabled. But this is NOT the kind of welfare state we have today. Today, we have a big, very bureaucratic welfare state wanting to make us ALL happy instead of only focusing on the tiny minority really needing help. Because in a free state, there will always only be a minority who needs help. Otherwise, the system would collapse in any case, because a minority could never sustain a majority.

"That's why you hear the term "rights, not rescue" from prostitution defenders all the time. They don't want to "rescue" people, i.e. they don't want (...) no exit programs for prostitutes, and they want to give people the right to be tortured and raped!"

False. Some sex worker rights activists are leftists, who are very much in favour of the welfare state. They are NOT even against exit programs for sex workers (neither am I), as long as it's a program, you can voluntarily adhere to by your own choice. What they ask for, are rights (because they have stillno rights in most parts of the world), including labour rights. And what they ask for, is to be considered human beings with agency. They deplore the paternalism of the "rescue industry". There's a big difference between the real rescue of a victim from perpetrators and being forced to change your lifestyle by busybodies. If the so-called rescue organizations would only focus on real victims, they wouldn't be attacked at all, they are attacked because they want to "rescue" sexworkers from their freely chosen work. A "rescue" of that kind isn't appreciated at all. I'd firmly reject such a "rescue" myself. Every sane human being with self-esteem would reject such "rescue". This has absolutely nothing to do with social benefits.That's another discussion where activists surely have different opinions on it.

"By the way, I have seen on twitter how prostitution defenders attack prostitutes who revealed abuses within the sex industry. (...) She was vilified in a very awful way by prostitution defenders on the internet. (...) There is a general denial of any kind of abuse in the sex industry (...) . Within the pro-prostitution movement, forced prostitution is called an 'abolitionist myth'."

I would not say that forced prostitution is a myth, but I'd say that the claim, that it is the default, is indeed a myth. There are cases of abuse in the sex industry. But the sex industry is the only industry this seems to justify prohibition in some minds. Sadly, this puts pressure on the sex workers to not talk about the negative sides of their job. Because in any job, you have things you don't like, you may have clients who annoy you etc. We can talk about the negative things in our jobs. But if sexworkers talk about it, it is often takenas reason to call for abolition of their work. So, they may not dare to talk about it. Some may even throw the baby out with the bathwater and attack other women who talk about such things. I don't consider that right.

Well, we both don't move away from our own positions. I'll try to convince you in another way.

I image a small socialist commune inhabited by people who don't want to trade, and who don't want to use money, or something equivalent. They do everything for the common good.

In such a society everybody has certain tasks. People feel the duty to perform labour for the common good. One person, cleans clothes, another lays bricks, another takes care of the sick and injured people, and so on, and so on. These tasks could even be dangerous or traumatizing in some circumstances, like cleaning very sick people, or helping a child who has horrifying injuries. This is a sacrifice people make to help other people.

It could happen that a person becomes a bit lazy, and he/she works somewhat less, or not at all, while he/she has the ability to do so. In such a society he/she will be approached by other people and encouraged to work more. People even sacrifice some of their own labour hours to this person if no tasks are left.

Now, imagine prostitution in such a society. I think in such a society prostitution cannot exist, and even if it exists, it would be really really rare. Hardly any woman would voluntarily sleep with all men who sexually approach her, seeing it as a duty to add her share to society. It would be strange if people encourage a young lazy woman to make herself sexually available to all men (except perhaps her family members).

I know you are going to say that we don't live in such a society, and such a society isn't desirable. Let's just make such a hypothetical society smaller, and imagine a small community of families who live in a big house. All the family members have their share in the household. Or just imagine a small household of students. Basically these small households are socialist communes.

What I want to say is, I don't see it as a problem if people have certain duties, even if there is a level of social pressure to push people to do more, even when this work is dangerous and filthy sometimes (while I believe this danger and filthiness should be kept to a minimum). I see it as no problem when a father asks his teenage daughter, aged 19, who lives at home with her parents, to clean the dishes. You could say she has her tasks and duties in the household. Now imagine, that a friend of the father stays a weekend in his house, could he demand his daughter to have sex with his friend? It would be preposterous. Do the male students in the dormitory demand of a lazy female student that she has sex with all the male students in the dormitory. Of course not! It would be almost like sexual assault making this demand. And she would never offer it herself (okay, perhaps in really rare cases).

But in the society we live we have this exact same situation regarding prostitution where it is some kind of duty for a special prostitute class of women to be always sexually available. And now because it is "work", we find it acceptable that these women detest having sex with strange men. And a sensible person cannot see offering sexual services while not liking it as some kind of sacrifice for the common good, or as something to help other people.

You name the example of the cashier, and that this is also a shitty job sometimes. But it is something completely different from having unwanted sex. And not just unwanted sex like "I don't really feel like it", I mean really abhorring it, because this is what regularly happens in prostitution.

Bottom line:1. Cleaning dishes, working behind a counter or laying bricks, could be duties, even if you don't like it.2. Being sexually available to all men (except perhaps family members), is definitely not a duty, it is rape!

And I want to emphasize again that in the real world of prostitution, many prostitutes don't make that much money, and many prostitutes have to accept sexual demands by clients they absolutely abhor, but which they perform anyway just to make a little bit more money. A prostitute told me once that she hardly had any clients when she offered all sexual acts to be performed with a condom. When she started offering blowjobs without using a condom, she suddenly had many more clients. The interesting thing was that she seemed to adapt her own morality to the demands of the clients. She said she looked it up on the internet and 'discovered' you don't get HIV from giving blowjobs without condom.

I think this is what also happens to the prostitutes who support prostitution. They are so dependent on the sex industry, that they adapt their morality to the ideas of clients, pimps and pornographers.

Regarding the 'rescue industry', I find it totally logical that people want to help people to leave a job which ex-prostitute and former spokesperson of the Red Thread, Metje Blaak has described as total humiliation, and the dirtiest profession in the world.

And, I don't want social workers and policemen to force prostitutes to leave the sex industry. You could just nicely ask it. I think many prostitutes will accept the offer if you truly help them, and compensate them for the loss of income. Remember, many prostitutes don't earn that much money.

Oh man, I have read ur comment on my blog. U cant ask people to do what urself cant do! U live obsessed by prostitution and u are getting worse and worse each day, If u lived a satisfactory sexual life, Im sure u'd be happy. But now u arent a happy person.

You are too late Cliente X to accept the offer. I already visited a prostitute. Yesterday. I am so sad.

I hoped if you accepted the offer I could stop myself from doing it, because I have to give you money. It is too late. I am very very depressed, and I am seriously contemplating to step out of this life.

About Me

I am a compulsive visitor of prostitutes and porn sites, and I desperately want to stop. I'm also known as Kris2 and @Donkey_Kris2 on twitter. I have studied the Dutch sex industry for years to find information about how to separate forced from voluntary prostitutes, and I share this information on my blog. My current position is that prostitution and porn are always violations of human rights. Prostitution is paid sexual harassment of poor and destitute people who have very limited means to prevent this harassment. Porn is sexual torture captured on film. I would brand myself as a socialist, a vegan, an abolitionist and as a sex-negative person.